Static electricity? How does that work?

If you fly a kite in a thunderstorm just right you can turn yourself into a living plasma creature.

Very briefly.

Why not just paint a big target on yourself?

I like to stand far away from those who try to cheat death.

far, far away

now I remember why

No, I wasn't sad when Steve Irwin got stung to death while swimming with stingrays but thanks for asking.

Ohh baby, fly in the rain?

I'm 50+ and have flown kites with my kids and my Dad (80) with the rule "When Clouds full of Lighting are over head, we are packed up on the ground glad we are not dead."

Those clowns are Darwin Award entrants and a greasy cloud away from being on the wrong side of Boing Boing News. All they needed was a 30 pack of Bush and an opening of "Hey Ya'll watch this"

"The US National Lightning Safety Institute[10] advises everyone to have a plan for their safety when a thunderstorm occurs and to commence it as soon as the first lightning or thunder is observed. This is important, since lightning can strike without rain actually falling. If thunder can be heard at all then there is a risk of lightning. The safest place is inside a building or a vehicle. Risk remains for up to 30 minutes after the last observed lightning or thunder." And: "U.S. National Park Ranger Roy Sullivan has the record for being struck by lightning the most times. Sullivan was struck seven times during his 35 year career. He lost the nail on one of his big toes, and suffered multiple injuries to the rest of his body." No superpowers, sorry.

Perhaps like certain primitive tribal peoples were known to do they should - like the tribal shamans did then - ascend the highest nearby hill, all the while brandishing a metal wand or pole of power, to attract the attention of the thunder gods.
IIRC, those shamans often impressed their fellows by their apparent "success"!

Is there anything kite flying can't do?

WHAT DOES IT MEEEEAN?!

We used to do this with plastic sporks and paper straw wrappers in elementary school. It's easy enough, just rapidly rub the underside of a spork on your shirt, and voila, you have gained the powers of paper control.

It's a heck of a lot safer, too.

Don't for a moment think we were not alarmed. It became clear that we were pushing the limits of safety certainly. But then again, when was the last time you had true exhilaration while being totally safe at the same time?

Truth be known, it was not our intention to fly near a storm. We felt that the storm had moved away sufficiently. It's likely that all three kites were gathering charge at the time. But this one was insulated from ground, thus we only noticed it from this one because it was allowed to charge up. Leaving it be for a while would produce a larger charge.

Phillip was great. He was simultaneously extremely worried about safety, and yet couldn't stop playing with the static charge.

I guess we gotta post how this was stupid so others won't try to do the same thing, but it's cool too. Not that different from hobby storm chasers, and everyone seems to like them. anyone know if the video actually exists on the web anywhere? Went to the kite designing site it originated from and ... poof ....

Can we let Steve Irwin rest in peace? What happened w/the stingray was 1 in a billion chance. It's not like he bled to death becuase one of his crocs bit his arm off in an area remote enough they couldn't get him to the hospital in time.

"But then again, when was the last time you had true exhilaration while being totally safe at the same time?"

I don't see how you were "totally safe"... Clearly, your kites were acting as lightning rods and the fact that you were touching the insulated kite's string made YOUR BODY the path of least resistance, should lightning have struck the kite.

But never mind, just keep on keepin' on. By the way, to which charitable organization should I contribute in your name?

@MarkM

Yes I suppose my wording could have been better. The title of the boing post is a bit misleading also. We were not flying IN a storm. We were flying with a storm just visible on the western horizon that had come and gone.

My statement is supposed to reflect the fact that I can't remember the last time I was really exhilarated AND totally safe. Can you?

I love how everyone claims to be so worried for our safety, but in reality they would probably rather watch lightning actually strike.

This event was an accident. Being a kite flyer and weather watcher for the vast majority of my life, I can say that this is very rare, and always worrisome. Definitely not something we seek out.

I have also experienced this phenomenon in slightly overcast conditions and no storm activity at all. No rain, no lighting the whole day, nothing.

I think the aspect of this instance which it truly worth noting is that we had two other kites 'showing' zero charging effect. They were at the same altitude, and only a few feet from this one. It's my guess that the charge was occurring on those as well, but had this one not been insulated, we would have never known that we were already the 'path of least resistance' on the other two kites that day. We would've gone home thinking that nothing abnormal had happened at all.

As in, you cant charge your body and get a spark to the door knob, while holding the door knob. You first have to build up the potential, and then discharge it. The other two kites were under constant discharge, but that doesn't mean that the electrons weren't dancing. It just means that this might be happening much more often than anyone is aware of.

I wonder what voltage that was generating. Shame they had no multimeter...

@jamiethehutt

I was totally imagining the phone app 'multimeter' as i shot the video -- although i don't think it would be good for the ram :)

I get this everytime I walk my dogs under the powerlines. Can't touch them because visible sparks fly from their coat to my hand.

Static electricity how the f does it work?

You guys were tempting fate a bit, but hey ... Ben Franklin played with that stuff, he survived.

When you're under a charge-bearing cloud, there's charge flowing along the surface of everything on the ground underneath it. It's even in the air; I was in a pitch-black room when a bolt struck a hundred yards away, and just before it there was bright flash in the air in the middle of the room. Stuff's cool because no-body knows how it all works.

Wish you'd put some black behind those finger sparks, gotta be a few thousand volts there.

Too bad it doesn't lead to pseudo-precognition.

SAFETY THIRD!

True story.
A friend tells me that, on a clear day back in the 70s, the time of Red LED Watches, he was hiking on a mountain and happened to look down at said watch which was making an unfamiliar buzzing sound: he further observed it was inexplicably blinking with strange characters. Then, one of his companions started laughing at the other: her hair was elevating in a strange way. At some point, someone realized that they had to reduce elevation and quickly, and they started running. The lightning struck shortly thereafter and the flash was instantaneous with the sound: they'd narrowly missed a strike.

The absence of rain or rain-clouds does not mean an absence of a potentially fatal electric potential between the sky and the ground. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_lightning

So, sorry for being strident, but I have zero-tolerance for lightning and if you must "do" lightning, please don't take anyone else with you.

@MarkM

Your comment seems to suggest that a safe time to fly kites, or walk outside for that matter, does not exist. I think I will agree with you there. I'm guessing that you're just terribly useful to have around. Thanks for the wiki search service.

When I was much younger [we knew about lightning even then] we ran and jumped in a car because my hair was standing on end too. Pretty wild stuff. No other warning signs like that on this day.

We might want to consider, that this entire kite rig is an insulator. The line we were flying on is made from basically the same material that is used to insulate wires. Conversely they make lightning rods from highly-conductive materials like copper for really good reasons.

I'm not so sure that lightning even really "sees" our rig. Does someone know? Our line was very dry, although the air was a bit humid.

You seem handy with google. While I find a lot of warning talk about it, I can't find a single actual story of someone being struck by lighting while flying a kite. Although I didn't look for that long.

Does someone know of this actually happening? Please lets clearly not try to make it happen.